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Speaking of crony capitalism…

NYT reports on the recently passed Congressional ban on earmarks for profit-earning corporations…which has resulted in congressmen telling their corporate clients to create nonprofit orgs that are still eligible for earmarks. So much for that “change we can believe in,” eh? Money quote:

TOLEDO, Ohio — Just one day after leaders of the House of Representatives announced a ban on earmarks to profit-making companies, Victoria Kurtz, the vice president for marketing of a small Ohio defense contracting firm, hit on a creative way around it.

To keep the taxpayer money flowing, Ms. Kurtz incorporated what she called the Great Lakes Research Center, a nonprofit organization that just happened to specialize in the same kind of work performed by her own company — and at the same address.

Now, the center — which intends to sell the Pentagon small hollow metal spheres for body armor that the Defense Department has so far declined to buy in large quantities and may never use — has $10.4 million in new earmark requests from Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio.

The congresswoman, who has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Ms. Kurtz’s family and her business’s lobbyists, thought the quickly hatched nonprofit organization was a convenient solution.

Marcy Kaptur is a Democrat. Keep that in mind as you realize this brave beacon of social justice and the working man is fleecing working people across the country to give a preferential deal for unnecessary junk to a defense contractor that happens to massively fund her campaigns. How is that any better than what the Republicans did under Bush?

The bigger government gets, the more inviting the playing field becomes for big corporations able to spend money to figure out the rules and regulations or even write them for their own benefit. If you’re as sickened by the close relationship between politicians and large corporations as I am, it’s essential that you fight for fewer regulations so that small businesses can compete with these flabby giants grown dependent on government’s “benevolent” interference.